Inside the greatest FA Cup upset of all: Bandages, tractors and a club driven by grief
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Caoimhe O'Neill and Matt Woosnam
Macclesfield's shock win against FA Cup holders Crystal Palace will live long in the memory. This is how they did it
At the end of Macclesfield’s stunning 2-1 win against Crystal Palace in the third round of the FA Cup, their captain and player of the match, Paul Dawson, hoofed the ball away. Anywhere would do — and anywhere did.
The whistle went shortly after the midfielder, wrapped in a headbandage from a collision in the seventh minute, made contact with the ball.
The scoreline will forever read: Macclesfield 2-1 Crystal Palace. The sixth-tier National League North side, placed 117 positions below their Premier League opposition, produced the biggest FA Cup upset of all time.
The last time a non-league side knocked out the FA Cup holders was Palace themselves 117 years ago when, in the first round of the 1908-09 edition, they defeated Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Macclesfield’s shock victory on Saturday was the first time in the competition’s 155-year history that a sixth-tier side had beaten a top-flight one. It will go down as the greatest day in the club’s history. And the fans at Moss Rose in the north-west of England could barely believe their eyes.
Paula Parks is a lifelong fan who attended the game with her husband, Colin, and their two sons, Mason, 10, and Dylan, 13. They celebrated Dawson’s opening goal while still expecting to lose the game.
Macclesfield celebrate Paul Dawson’s opening goal (Darren Staples / AFP via Getty Images)
“It’s just something you can’t write. It’s something we didn’t even expect,” Parks said. “I’ve had butterflies, I’ve been crying. It’s just absolutely fantastic. It felt like we were on top of the game rather than the underdogs.”
Asked where this day ranks in her life, Parks laughed, saying: “Not even the birth of my children or my wedding that I waited so long for (come close). This has got to be the top of it all, definitely.”
When supporters invaded the artificial pitch to celebrate at full time, Dawson was lifted into the air. It looked like a recreation of those iconic images of former England captain Bobby Moore after winning the World Cup in 1966. And fittingly, Macclesfield had just beaten a team with two players on the pitch, in Marc Guehi and Adam Wharton, who will likely be at this summer’s World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico with England.
Dawson’s orange armband was bright, but his wide smile was even brighter. On Tuesday, he had been shovelling snow off the pitch to ensure their sixth-tier match against Radcliffe went ahead. On Friday, he had been working packing boxes of candles and diffusers for Chloe Jade Home, a family-run business based in Cheshire. After work, he turned into ‘Postman Pat’ as he hand-delivered new tracksuits to his team-mates.
Manager John Rooney, the younger brother of the former England and Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney, had to tell Dawson to climb down from a tractor shovelling snow on Tuesday and get some rest before the 2-1 win that night.
John Rooney is interviewed alongside his brother Wayne by the BBC (Darren Staples / AFP via Getty Images)
There was no resting on Saturday afternoon for any of Macclesfield’s part-time players, who only train twice a week. They put in a tireless, gutsy display. Dawson, who sent Macclesfield into dreamland with that 1-0 lead at the break, was at the centre of it all.
“He (John Rooney) told me last week I’m two stone overweight and my best foot is my head,” Dawson, who scored a header, laughed as he spoke to the BBC at full time.
On Friday, as Dawson was boxing up those candles, centre-back Sam Heathcote was teaching PE at Stamford Park Primary School in Altrincham, just as he has done for the past five years. Heathcote was the player fixing Dawson’s bandage right before he powered that header past Palace goalkeeper Walter Benitez. “I’ll take the assist for that,” he said.
An assembly was held at his school on Friday in which his pupils wished him luck. He said the older kids understood it more and, like him, are used to watching the Palace players on television.
“I didn’t expect to be going in on Monday having won, but it’ll be really nice. I’ll have a smile on my face for a long time,” Heathcote said.
Macclesfield owner Rob Smethurst will be the same. “I’ve lost my voice already, I have been screaming that much,” he told the BBC at half-time. “I might find myself in Ibiza by the end of the evening.”
Smethurst never expected Macclesfield to be leading against Premier League opposition at half-time in a cup game, let alone defeating them – but he also never expected to be the owner of a football club that five years ago had ceased to exist.
In September 2020, Macclesfield Town, as they were then known, were expelled from the National League after being liquidated. Unpaid debts of £500,000 ($670,000 at current exchange rates) sunk the club founded in the former mill town in 1874. Fans thought their club was gone forever until Smethurst came to the rescue — something he himself has little memory of.
It was four days of drinking, which Smethurst said led him to make a drunken decision to buy Macclesfield’s stadium on the property website Rightmove. Smethurst might not remember making the business move, but he committed himself to it all the same. He spent the next few years investing heavily in the phoenix club, which was reborn as Macclesfield FC.
Macclesfield owner Rob Smethurst after the final whistle (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Former Wales international Robbie Savage was one of the people brought on board as a part-owner. Savage later became the director of football and there was a BBC documentary titled ‘Macclesfield: From The Ashes’ that followed their journey, starting in the ninth tier in 2021. After three promotions in four years, including one with Savage as manager for the 2024-25 season, the town’s beating heart has been restored.
With Savage moving on to manage Forest Green Rovers in the National League last summer, it was Rooney, then a Macclesfield midfielder, who Smethurst asked to take the reins. Six months into the job, Rooney, whose big brother was moved to tears on national television at full time, had to deal with an unforeseen tragedy in the team.
Rooney, who shared a close bond with the former Wolves academy player, had to call each member of the squad to break the news to them.
“It is never, ever going to get easier,” Rooney said, dedicating the win to McLeod, whose parents were in attendance. “We spoke about him being here with us, I didn’t want to say too much before the game to the lads because I didn’t want to put a bit of extra pressure on them.”
After the match, McLeod’s parents were waiting to embrace Rooney in his office. “That’s something that’s really special to me, knowing they were here with us. I’m sure Ethan was definitely looking down on us today.”
Rooney said the heartbreaking and unexpected loss of McLeod, who he brought to Macclesfield in July, completely tore through the club. This was just the fourth game the team have played since losing him and his No 20 shirt has been officially retired.
“I was thinking about it when the final whistle went, Ethan was here,” goalscorer Isaac Buckley-Ricketts told TNT Sports. Bedlam ensued after his backheeled flick crept across the line to make it 2-0 in the 61st minute. It was a goal Palace manager Oliver Glasner labelled “slapstick”.
Palace turned up as the FA Cup holders, wearing a golden kit with a special badge on the sleeve reserved for winners. They even played the game with a Mitre ball only the competition’s winners are allowed to use.
“This gives us a responsibility to show our standards,” Glasner said about those details in the build-up to the game. “It doesn’t mean we have to win it again, but it’s to show our standards. I don’t feel pressure, but responsibility.”
Isaac Buckley-Ricketts wheels away after his goal (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Glasner said that he expected his team to score five or six past the non-league side. Instead, they laboured and created little to trouble Max Dearnley in the Macclesfield goal, except for Yeremy Pino’s consolation free kick in the 90th minute.
“That’s the David against Goliath story,” Glasner said. “Everything (I could say to) try to explain the performance or find some excuses would be completely wrong. I have no words for this performance today and it’s not just losing, it’s almost creating no chances in the attack. This was really hard to watch.”
While Glasner said the Palace dressing room atmosphere was one of “every kind of emotion beside happiness”, the scenes in the Macclesfield one were mixed.
There was sadness and celebration as the parents of McLeod poignantly made their way around hugging every one of their son’s team-mates and congratulating them on the win. McLeod’s space in the dressing room lay empty, with a photo of him there in tribute.
Macclesfield celebrated the win in memory of McLeod, whose presence they all say was felt throughout the day. They belted out ‘Someone Like You’ by Adele, now an FA Cup tradition, and sprayed champagne at each other. And Smethurst has promised a trip to Ibiza — not this weekend, but at some point in the future.
Now Macclesfield will enter Monday’s fourth-round draw again as the lowest-ranked side in the competition. But after their convincing and hearty win over Palace, nobody will feel relieved to draw them. And their name will be drawn — they all made sure of that.
